Supporting the Post-vacation Let-down
with your neurodivergent child
Spring break is here, which means taking a break from school and spending time with family and friends. It also often means traveling, later bedtimes, and sometimes more sugar for our kids. But for neurodivergent children, those with ADHD, anxiety, or who are autistic, traveling for spring break also means different schedules, unknown routines, and often more dysregulation.
Many families I work with create vacation routines that differ from home and school routines, but are consistent enough to keep children regulated while experiencing new things during their travels. For more traveling strategies, be sure to check out my blog post: How to Teach Your Neurodivergent Child to Travel. Many families have found success with the strategies I mention in that post, but today’s blog is all about supporting your child when they come home.
The Vacation-Mode Mind Shift
Growing up in North Carolina afforded me the gift of many weekend trips. We could travel to the beach or the mountains for just two nights and not miss any school. This, of course, left little time to shift gears when returning home on Sunday evening. I recall always feeling sad when leaving the beach. My sadness usually lasted the span of the car trip home. That’s usually all I needed to shift from vacation mode to school-week mode. It also helped that the next weekend trip wasn’t too far away.
The vacation-mode mind shift can be much more difficult for children who struggle with anxiety, rigidity, and transition. Returning from a vacation is the ultimate transition.
The small version of this type of transition is when we ask kids to stop playing and come to dinner.
The medium-sized version of this transition is every Sunday night when our children have to shift from weekend mode to school-week mode.
But leaving vacation and returning to “the real world” is hard for all of us and is often one of the hardest types of transition for our neurodivergent kids.
So what does this shift look like? In children who can verbalize their emotions, this may involve noticing they are sad and talking through the transition. But for children who are not able to fully recognize or express their emotions, the post-vacation let-down often looks more like a post-vacation meltdown full of irritability, rigidity, emotional sensitivity, arguing, or what some parents just describe as their child being "off."
The Power of Pattern
Many autistic children think in patterns; it's how they make sense of the world when so much feels unknown and overwhelming. In one of my favorite books, “Uniquely Human: A different way of seeing autism” Dr. Barry M. Prizant does a phenomenal job explaining how soothing patterns can be for autistic children. Dr. Prizant quotes his friend, Michael John Carley, an autistic adult who explains it this way: "The opposite of anxiety isn't calm, it's trust." So, when autistic children do not have a pattern to trust, they become anxious (don’t we all?), which leads to dysregulation.
"The opposite of anxiety isn't calm, it's trust."
To help your neurodivergent child remain regulated at school, you and your child’s team have likely created and relied on predictable routines communicated visually so your child can review the plan whenever they need to. Just like travel plans, many families I work with create weekend routines to help children trust the plan even when the day is different from a school week. I call these trusted patterns “schemas.” Autistic children often develop “schemas” to make sense of the world. This is why one skill may not generalize to another setting or another person. It was learned within that schema, or pattern, and must be learned again when the variables change.
In the Middle
When I talk my own children through the post-vacation let-down it sounds something like this:
Our lives are made up of patterns. We go to school and work during the week and that is our learning time. We are home on the weekends and that is our playing time. When we shift from learning to playing we feel extra excited (think Friday afternoon) and when we shift from playing to learning, we feel extra sad (the Sunday night blues).
When we get back from a trip, we are “in the middle” of the playing and the learning. As my son once put it, “It feels weird to be in the middle.” Yes, it does, because we are dysregulated.
The excited version of dysregulated on Friday afternoon doesn’t feel bad, so we usually don’t respond with negative behavior (although sometimes feeling overly excited leads to less impulse control). On the other hand, the sad version of “the middle” is a total bummer. I’m pretty sure we have all felt mopey on a Sunday night, dreading that work meeting at 8:00 am Monday morning. When returning from vacation, some can just experience “the middle” during a car ride home, but many of our kids need much longer to process that strange feeling of being “in the middle.”
How to Help
Take time to transition. My family figured out long ago that we need an extra day between vacation and the work week. Sometimes we need a whole weekend. This day is filled with unpacking, laundry, and grocery shopping. It also helps us shift out of vacation mode and into work-week mode. Your child may need even more time, especially if sleep cycles are off due to time zones or later bedtimes. Some kids can process the change in a day with just one night's sleep while others may need the entire weekend.
Create a routine for “the middle.” Schedule the same routine when returning home that you think your child needs. Often this is a hard time for them so sometimes it helps to plan a favorite activity to look forward to while you’re doing all that grocery shopping and laundry. Perhaps have them spend some time with an extended family member or family friend they love and have missed on vacation. Often just doing the regular weekend routine you would do before any school week can help to “reboot” their system to prepare for the Sunday night transition ahead. Transitioning from vacation to school is sometimes just too far of a jump, but transitioning from the feeling of a regular weekend at home to school is much more familiar and doable.
Downplay the trip. I know we all want to talk about how wonderful the vacation was when we return home, but this could be a trigger for some children. It might feel unnatural for parents to de-emphasize such a great trip, but it can be beneficial to keep the rehashing of awesome events to a minimum, or not at all, until more time has passed. Talking about how fun the trip was just reminds children of how much they miss it and can dysregulate them more when they are already feeling the weirdness of “the middle.”
Go ahead and start talking about the next family field trip. This can be very helpful for moving children through the sadness of “the middle” and thinking about the next time for fun. Looking ahead also reminds them that the pattern of vacation and home life keeps going on repeat.
Explain that our lives are a balance of learning and playing. If life was all learning and work, we would burn out. If we only played, we would not make progress as a society (not to mention we would all run out of money!). This can be hard for children to grasp, but they can often understand the pattern of taking breaks from learning so they can play. The hard part can be convincing them that learning is helpful, too. Pointing out how you needed math to calculate the ride wait times at Disney or using your understanding of history to enjoy those museums can help children see why learning is essential to making their travel time happen. We can’t have one without the other.
When to Travel
Parents often know when their children are ready to travel. But, sometimes the strong emotions of the post-vacation let-down are too much for families to manage and they may want to avoid traveling all together. It just doesn't seem worth it…YET.
Remember that children are constantly developing. This spring, it may not feel possible to travel, but a year from now may be a different story. Traveling often expands flexibility in anxious children and creates strong connections for them. So, in my experience it has been worth it. The sadness of “the middle” can only exist because the excitement of the vacation was so fantastic. Once this balance feels worth it, you know it’s time to plan that vacation, or family field trip.
Stay Connected!
~Dr. Emily
**All content provided is protected under applicable copyright, patent, trademark, and other proprietary rights. All content is provided for informational and education purposes only. No content is intended to be a substitute for professional medical or psychological diagnosis, advice or treatment. Information provided does not create an agreement for service between Dr. Emily W. King and the recipient. Consult your physician regarding the applicability of any opinions or recommendations with respect to you or your child's symptoms or medical condition. Children or adults who show signs of dangerous behavior toward themselves and/or others, should be placed immediately under the care of a qualified professional.**
So many people talk about how to prepare your child for the transition into or during a vacation, but I don't think I have seen many people talk about the transition out of a vacation and the letdown we and our children often feel. Thank you for covering this important topic. It is definitely important during the spring and summer.